So instead of simply paying up, Miss Rantzen insisted on her day in court.

Yesterday that decision cost her an extra £280 after a judge decided she had been in the wrong.

But the 64-year-old former presenter of That's Life had no regrets as she emerged from the hearing.

'I just think that it's important to stand up and be counted when you are treated badly by police,' she said.

'If he had been pleasant, courteous and civil, as most policemen have been in the past, I may have shrugged my shoulders, paid £60 and just thought "that's life".'

Miss Rantzen, most recently seen as a contestant on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing, told the court she had been driving in central London with her daughter Emily, 26, in June last year when she drove through the crossing.

'There was nobody visible on the crossing when I crossed. It was clear as I entered and exited. If there had been someone on the crossing I know now I would have seen them,' she said.

'I would say I was driving at around two

or three miles an hour. I was listening to my daughter who was reading poetry to me because she was due to write an essay about Browning.

'He is one of her favourite poets and I admire him greatly.'

Miss Rantzen said she then noticed a 'heavy-set man in a crash helmet' gesticulating at her.

'He was saying to me very loudly, and very belligerently I felt, "didn't you see the two women on the crossing?"

'It seemed to me to be in an abrupt tone and was quite intimidating. I found it rather alarming because he was so antagonistic.'

Sergeant Kevin McKeown told the court Miss Rantzen was 'giggly' when he pulled her BMW over on Upper Woburn Place.

He said he had been riding a marked police motorbike behind her car when he spotted the pedestrians on the crossing.

'The women were approximately one fifth of the way across and I saw the car continue,' he told the court.

'It was quite clear from where I was the car wasn't going to stop - no brake lights came on. The pedestrians slowed down on the crossing while the car passed in front of them.'

Sergeant McKeown said he asked Miss

Rantzen to pull over. 'That's when the driver said "I didn't see them, sorry" and then I asked her to stop the car,' he said.

'She was very giggly. She said she was sorry. She said she had been listening to her daughter.

'She had been reading poetry to her which she did not understand. I took that to mean she didn't understand the poetry.'

District judge James Henderson, sitting at Highbury Corner magistrates court in North London decided Miss Rantzen had suffered a 'momentary lapse of concentration'.

She was found guilty of failing to give precedent to a pedestrian on a crossing and ordered to pay £90 plus £250 prosecution costs. She will also have three penalty points on her licence. 'I take the view that it was a momentary lapse of concentration with lots of things going on in difficult conditions,' the judge told her. 'There is no careless driving element at all.'

After the case, Miss Rantzen, who has made a formal complaint about the officer's attitude, said the case had been expensive, especially taking her own legal expenses into account. But she said it was worth the bills.

' It's terribly important that when this happens, particularly if you believe yourself to be innocent, that you do argue your case,' she said.

'Traffic officers are the interface between the law-abiding public and the police and if you want to continue to have trust and confidence in our policemen then they must treat us well.'